Zearalenone (ZEN) as an estrogenic fungal toxin produced by Fusarium graminearum widely presents in grains, corn,wheat and their by-products. The presence of ZEN seriously endangers the health of animal and humanbeing due to the reproductive toxicity, immunotoxicity, genotoxicity, carcinogenic and teratogenic effects. The adsorption method is the most effective way to remove ZEN, and the commonly used adsorbents are silicate minerals. Attapulgite is an advantageous resource in China, which is used as a feed material to enhance immune function and antioxidant capacity, promote intestinal health, and improve animal production performance and product quality. However, it is difficult to realize the efficient removal of low polarity and hydrophobic ZEN using hydrophilic and negatively charged attapulgite. It is thus indispensable to modify attapulgite with cationic surfactants to enhance their surface hydrophobicity and adsorption property toward ZEN. Imidazole ionic liquid surfactant CnmimBr has lowercritical micelle concentration, higher adsorption efficiency and better surface properties than conventional surfactants with the same carbon chain length. In this paper, attapulgite was modified with ionic liquid surfactant CnmimBr for the efficient adsorption of ZEN.